The History of Graphic The History of Graphic DesignDesign

The History of Graphic Design:

From Stone Tablets to Computers

By:Anthony J. DeBenedictis

The Pre-History With the advent of written language, people

were able to combine text and pictures to tell a story.

This was the first use of graphic design dated as far back as the time of the Sumarians.

An artisan would engrave characters and pictures onto a stone, usually shale or slate.

The artisan always traveled with the tablet stones.

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A stone tablet that wasused for engraving text and images into.

The Pre-History The Egyptians used paper from the papyrus

plant on which they would write and draw pictures using inks.

The Chinese developed character stamps or movable stamps and these were dipped in ink and then pressed onto paper.

Both, the Chinese and Egyptians kept their records in scrolls.

Paper produced from rice bythe Chinese.

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The Renaissance During this period, there were great changes going

on in European art, society and graphic design. The creation of illuminated manuscripts:

These were handwritten books that were decorated and illustrated.

They were produced on parchment and vellum paper, which were from the treated skins of animals.

It took an artisan about four to five months to produce a 200-page book.

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A stylized character printed from a metal block.

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The Renaissance The next big innovation was typography:

Johann Gutenberg in Germany invented this method.

It used movable type and relief printing for producing typographic print and books.

Instead of using wooden blocks, he used metal blocks which he easily crafted since he was a goldsmith by trade.

After the advent of printed type using movable blocks and relief printing, artisans were becoming scarce.

The Early Process of Producing Books and Print

During the 1500’s and 1600’s after Gutenberg’s innovation in typography, a whole process was created using many different types of trained specialists.

The artisans that stayed in the industry became designers or engravers with special training at art academies throughout Europe.

The best engravers and designers were educated at art institutes in Italy and Spain.

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Sample page layouts done usingthe above process.

The Early Process of Producing Books and Print The Process:

Parchment is prepared from scrapping animal skins.

The typefounder pours melted lead into the type mold to case a character.

Printers print text onto sheets of paper and when the large sheets of paper are dried, it is cut into pages.

Designers draw their images or pictures.The engravers then engrave the images into

wooden or metal blocks.The illuminator applies color and gold leaf to the

manuscript.Then bookbinders collate the pages and apply

the covers.

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The Industrial Age One of the big breakthroughs that came about

during the Industrial Age was the introduction of many new typefaces.

These new typefaces ranged from fanciful and delicate to strong and crisp.

These new typefaces were created for a wide variety of demands.

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The Linotype machine.

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Printed work produced on the Linotype machine

The Industrial Age The Industrial Age also brought about high

speed printing presses. This doubled the output of print work

compared to the now obsolete hand press method.

In 1886, Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the Linotype.

This allowed a typesetter to punch a key and the correct letter would print on the paper.

The Post Industrial Age The invention of the photographic camera

highlighted this period and designers were now able to incorporate some reality in their work.

The First World War was being fought overseas and this allowed for photographs to be printed in magazines that reported on the war.

People now were able to see the horrors of war caught in still images.

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A poster advertising their company.

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Futura font on a style sheet, which was created by Bauhaus.

The Post Industrial Age Newspapers and magazines were becoming more

and more popular during the early part of the 1900’s because of the use of printed photographs that accompanied the stories.

Using a large array of colors in printed work started to become popular during the 1920’s and 1930’s.

An Apple Fell From The Tree During the early 1980’s, Apple introduced

Macintosh computers. The Apple computers used a color Graphic User

Interface (GUI), which allowed the user to see what they were working on before it goes to print.

Apple computers went through many changes during the first part of the 1980’s

Scanners were also introduced during the early 1980’s as well as printers that printed in color.

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The Macintosh computerby Apple.

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A design piece produced on aMac with Photoshop and PaintShop Pro.

An Apple Fell From The Tree

Adobe Systems also started their humble beginnings during this period, by developing the first version of Photoshop.

Photoshop allowed designers to scan in photos and edit them for page layouts.

At the end of the 1980’s, Apple virtually owned the graphic design industry with its powerful Macintosh Classic.

The Digital Age The 1990’s saw more powerful design software

being developed and better computers by Apple.

Microsoft Windows developed Windows NT, a more powerful operating system than any other system they previously developed.

Also, Windows NT computer systems can be marketed at a lower price than Apple computer systems.

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A page layout produced in Adobe InDesign. The characters were designed in 3D Studio Max.

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A layout designed in Adobe Illustrator with elements imported from Photoshop.

The Digital Age Web design was also starting to move from the

static text format to a more graphical format that used stylized text and high quality images.

Adobe put out the first generations of Illustrator, a vector-based drawing application.

Breakthrough software of the 1990’s: Macromedia Flash Adobe Illustrator 3D Studio Max Adobe InDesign

The Present and Beyond The graphic design industry is constantly

changing with new applications and new powerful computers.

Higher speed Internet connections allowed design firms to use richer imagery.

Animation and video to create websites that are no longer pages and pages of text and images.

Color printers, powerful scanners, digital cameras and digital video are advancing in technology.

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The Power Book G4, which Enables designers to do their work away from the studio.

The Present and Beyond PC platforms are being developed to match the

power of the Apple computers. Also, Unix systems are starting to be used for graphic design.

Presently, these are the most powerful desktops used for design: The Apple Power Macintosh System with dual

2.0 gigahertz processors Hewlitt Packard and Sony Vaio Windows

computers with Intel 3GHz Silicon Graphics Unix (Linux) using MIPS

processors by Motorola

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A Silicon Graphics Unix workstation, which alsoruns Windows NT.